Debt
by ultraviolet9a
Summary: There’s a reason resurrection doesn’t happen naturally.


Debt

_

* * *

__He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned._

_Author Unknown_

* * *

He can't remember where he was. If it was Heaven or warm or soft or comforting, if Mom was there, or Jess. If it was a field or the pretty white-fenced house he always dreamt of. He can't remember if it was him back then, or something too vague, too instinctive, amoeba-like, a foetus floating in a bubble of safe and warm. 

All he remembers is that he wants to get back. All he knows is that he's not supposed to be here.

* * *

It's not him that comes back. Not exactly. 

He's too wrapped up in the _now _and the _here_ to notice (memories too hazy, trying to rearrange themselves, to _fit_)

((I-I saw you and Bobby, and...I felt this pain.))

The mattress isn't comfortable, and it smells weird. As if the room hasn't been aired properly, something like

((death))

fried chicken and whisky. And grief.

He should have known that scent. Should have recognized it. He's spent most of his life opening old graves, burning bones and flesh and decomposition.

But Dean's not here, and he's still so hazy. He lifts his shirt in front of the mirror, winces at the scar on his back

((This sharp pain, like...like, white-hot, you know.))

and he would have put two and two together at once, he's smart, so smart, he would have, if only by the way Dean hugged him when he walked back in the room

((But Dean, you can't patch up a wound that bad. ))

((No, Bobby could.))

but Dean's so good at lying.

And all that's left is anger (poor Ash/Andy/Roadhouse, motherfucking Jake) and purpose, and both are enough to fool anyone into living.

* * *

He thinks he already kind of knows by the way Bobby looks at him, by the way Jake pales 

((You were dead. I killed you.))

and his finger pulls the trigger over and over again, and then there is Dad,

and Dean pulling a trigger, THE trigger and then everything is over.

And it hits him then. Like a big ocean wave it comes crushing down on him, but he makes Dean spell it out anyway. It can be changed, he's thinking. It can be changed. He's still riding the adrenaline high, so he doesn't feel it yet. Doesn't feel how entelechy is claiming its right. Doesn't feel the hollow.

* * *

This is what he dreams of the first night after he comes back from the dead. Three women wearing the night. The one is holding a pair of iron scissors in one hand, a cut golden thread in the other. The second is clasping her arms to her chest. The third is turning a golden spindle, except that the thread she's spinning now is invisible. Not there. He wants to tell her she's working in vain. 

He wakes up with a gasp. He needs to remember.

((Dean…what happened to me?))

If he remembers, everything will be alright. If he remembers, he'll know, and the feeling of unease will go away.

The next night he doesn't dream of anything. It's the closest thing he remembers from back_ there, before_, the shadow land.

Waking up tastes like regret. Almost like metal.

* * *

"Sam," Dean says, large palm warm and flat on Sam's knee. "Don't worry. We'll figure it out. We got plenty of time." 

Dean doesn't get it. Sam doesn't tell him. It wouldn't be fair. Dean is the only thing keeping him together. Because there are forces inside him.

Sam remembers a science experiment they did in high school. Remembers removing air from a tin can and the tin can just got sucked inwards, collapsing on itself. This is how he feels.

((The hollow is greedy))

But.

Whenever he thinks of Dean, something catches in his throat, beats wildly against his chest. He thinks the force of it might tear him apart from the inside, like that alien bitch in those Sigourney Weaver movies.

Pressure inwards, pressure outwards. It feels almost like breathing. It will suffice.

For now.

* * *

He dreams of the night ladies again. This time the thread they are weaving is not invisible. The stern one is still cradling the scissors. She's cutting long lengths from another spindle, a spindle of shimmering white. The one that had her hands to her chest takes the new thread and ties it to the gold. The other one keeps on spinning. They all look sternly at him. The scissor lady puts the white spindle in his hands. It stops shimmering. Like a fast forward clip, it turns to ashes. 

He wakes up.

* * *

There's a twitching in his bones, restless, dark. His fingers move to it. He catches leaves and petals and crumbles them, fascinated, between huge fingertips and then smells the juice. It smells like life. The scent of life draining out, turning grey. He doesn't wash his hands afterwards.

* * *

Life should be for the living. 

He doesn't feel like one.

He doesn't smell like one either. He sniffs Dean's clothes when Dean's in the shower, tries to hold on to a smell of living.

One night he dreams that he's holding Dean, smelling him. Expects his brother's familiar scent (leather jacket, aftershave, musk, motel soap, cheap clothes detergent, hair gel, alive) to fill him. It doesn't smell this way.

Dean's not dead. Hasn't been dead. Not yet. But he smells just like those petals…like something seeping too quickly through his fingers.

That night he climbs into Dean's bed, moulds himself against his brother's body, nose hidden in his hair, the back of his neck. Scent is comforting.

"Please," he whispers as his brother tenses. Dean settles down. He falls asleep to the breath of his brother.

He seeks that lullaby every night.

Sometimes Dean will turn and cradle him like when they were children and Sammy had a nightmare.

((What's bugging you, Sammy?))

And Sam needs this. Needs to hold on to something that's real. The only thing that seems real. Needs something to anchor him _here_, _now_, not the shadow land.

Needs not to think of the scent of crushed petals. Not of his own scent, like mouldy leaves.

* * *

When they visit New York (_visit_ being a euphemism, what with tracking down and killing one of those son-of-a-bitch demons), he hooks up with Sarah, cuz Dean said so. 

Fucking feels right. Feels wrong. Feels normal only when he feels death and life wrapped all in one big orgasm.

"Little death," Sarah says, panting. "That's what the French call it."

He wishes she hadn't said so. He wishes they could have called it Little Life instead.

But Sarah doesn't notice. She laughs. Eats the chocolates he brought her.

He didn't bring her flowers.

He couldn't take the smell of fleeting life for too long.

* * *

He starts fucking women just to get a sense of warmth. 

Dean takes it as a sign of progress.

He can't tell Dean. And Dean can't tell (won't bring himself to admit what's to tell) either. Dean's still stuck in the afterglow of the Demon's death. Just joy that the brother is back.

In Dean's eyes Sam can see himself reflected, whole. As he was. Before. He knows it isn't true.

He wants to tell him that he had gotten it right in the first place.

What's dead should stay dead. No exceptions.

Let God figure out the rest.

* * *

Rumsfeld doesn't bark at him. He licks his hand, and then yelps and then watches him across the corner with careful, too sentient eyes. 

Sam gets it. Death leaves a signature. Like Cain's mark, his is the scar on his spine. And it's ironic, ironic really, how that scar he is wearing is given to him by a brother too.

If the Bible thinks it's a mortal sin to kill your own brother, then it doesn't know half of it.

Try bringing him back, for a change.

Resurrection is a bitch.

* * *

He wants out. He wants to go back. There was peace there. There was darkness. There was weightless existence. 

He watches with endless fascination as Rumsfeld tears a rat apart.

He remembers with endless fascination how his own fingers released the trigger time and time again on Jake.

It wasn't difficult. He'd been there after all, before.

He envies Jake nowadays.

* * *

The Demon still visits him in his dreams. 

"He should have left you there, ey, boy?" he prods. "He should have let you just be. You earned that."

When he wakes up, his heart is beating loudly. Doesn't make him feel any more alive for that.

* * *

"Why'd you bring me back, Dean?" he asks, all worlds slurry, tequila burning down his throat. 

All sluriness drains from Dean in one quick snap.

"Sam…" he says.

Cuz it's not getting any easier. Sam feels like an unwound clock. A ship without a compass. An empty shell. No drive, no purpose.

He guesses, maybe that's how it's meant to be. Maybe fate picks how long each must live. And it shouldn't be unwritten. Because once it is it can never be written back properly.

"Entelechy, Dean," he slurs.

"What are you talking about, Sammy?"

And he wants to tell him. How everything contains a purpose within itself. Everything contains an end within itself. And he understands now, Sam does. He's had his purpose. He's had his end. It was right. He shouldn't be here.

"Why'dyoudoitDean," he mumbles. "IloveyouDeanwhy'dyoudoit."

He falls asleep with tears streaking his face.

* * *

Hunt's not important. Can't be. Not when he feels so much affinity for what he hunts now. He gets it. They are mad because they are trying to find their purpose. 

He wishes he could be mad too. Not just hollow.

* * *

He can't tell Dean how he's getting colour-blind. Since he got back, colours seem to have drained gradually, forming new associations on sepia background. The sky is a faded, too faded blue. The road a grim black. The houses seem bleached. People soft and see-through like ghosts, only their veins more vibrant than they. 

Dean is the only thing that seems to be whole.

When Sam looks in the mirror, all he sees is a corpse.

* * *

He shouldn't have been back on the chess board. He's a pawn removed. That's how long the line lasted. That's how it was meant to be. He sinks his teeth into apples and oranges and apricots. Feels the texture but can't feel the taste. It's all drained. 

He loves sound. Listens to music a lot. It's the only thing that doesn't change. He closes his eyes, listens. Just listens.

"You're not sleeping _again_, are you?" Dean asks.

Well, he is. And when he isn't, he's still trying. Sleeping is the closest thing he has to what should be.

* * *

"You shouldn't have given your life for me, Dean," he says to the empty wind. He understands. Time feels like cardboard on his tongue, but he gets it. 

Dean's smell started to change. He smells like cut grass. Crushed petals.

Sam has his hands in his pockets when the crossroad demon shows up. She's wearing a red dress and blonde locks.

"Deal's off," he says pulling her for a kiss. She pushes him back. Knocks him hard. He barely feels it. Barely feels anything nowadays.

"Deal's off when I say so," she says. Not like he hadn't expected it.

Sam blows his brains out.

* * *

There's darkness and soft foetus-like state. Then his eyes snap open. There's blood smeared on his head and his clothes. He's got the headache to end all headaches. 

The bitch in the red dress is patiently crouching next to him. There's no cockiness, no bravado, nothing of the sort she pulled before. She looks tired.

"Deal's off when I say so," she repeats.

He hangs his head.

* * *

He's pounding his head on the wall. 

"Make it stop," he says. He's like a bird in a room. Trapped. Fluttering. Only much bigger. He feels his knuckles cracking against the walls. It feels good. Not like life, but akin to it.

It's as if he has a compass, and the compass says he shouldn't be here.

He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here. Time has no meaning state has no meaning purpose has no meaning eaten up inside out like leaf in the wind and make it stop Dean make it stop take me back Dean take me back

"Sam, stop it," Dean says. Tears are streaming down his face. "Please stop it."

He's falling apart.

"Please, Sammy, you gotta do this for me, you got to stop. We'll figure it out. Whatever's happening to you, we'll figure it out. Just you and me, Sammy, just you and me, please, Sammy, please come back to me."

Come back to me. Yeah. That was the problem to begin with.

* * *

Medication works for a while. In his soft, no-string shoes, no-belt clothes, he has his own quiet cell. He plays music a lot. He is…lucid. 

He tells Dean. About needing to get back. About sadness desperation pain torment.

Timeline is done, he can't have the sequel. He can't…_be_.

((what's dead should stay dead))

His blood is streaming through him, veins quietly throbbing, heart beating, breath leaving small fog prints against the plastic surface of the table. His body is alive and here, but it can't catch up with what's inside. What's inside has already died.

((shouldn't be here))

He remembers Bobby dropping by, remembers how the tears streaked his beard as he watched him being held by his brother.

He remembers that he has died. The fact that he's breathing is a mere formality.

* * *

There's a nurse here, all curves and blonde hair. 

"Jess," he tells her.

"Nuh-uh, honey, it's Sylvia." And of course it's Sylvia, but somehow it's also Jess. Because the lines have blurred and the worlds have merged.

The living with the living and the dead with the dead, that's how it should be, he knows that. Feels it tearing him apart, his own body a trap, a dead weight (oh he wishes). He shouldn't be here.

"Nuh-uh, honey, don't do that," Jessylvia says, slowly stopping his head from banging against the wall. He knows, on some elementary scanning-the-room-like-a-good-hunter level, that he's twice her size. But she feels solid as she pushes him back to his feet.

"You got a visitor, Sam," she says. "Do you really want that sweet brother of yours seeing you like that?"

And he doesn't. But that doesn't matter, either. It's all rather blurry.

Now that the medication has stopped working, all he does is trying to get back to sleep.

* * *

He's sleeping most of the time. Sleep is good. He doesn't care about nightmares. Sleep is Death's brother, and if he can't have Death, he'll take the next of kin. 

When he's not sleeping, everything feels unreal. There are lucid moments, when he realizes he's bitten his wrists, or bruised his head on the padded walls—he's nothing if not methodic.

He screams. It doesn't feel like screaming, because now sound is muted, too, but he can see himself as if from very far away.

Entelechy, he's thinking. He's not supposed to be here. His only purpose is to get back. Fix the natural order of things.

* * *

"I love you too much," Dean says. "God help me, I love you too much, that's my only sin, Sammy. God help me. God help me." 

Then Dean's lips are on his forehead, and Dean is crying.

"I'll fix this, Sammy. I promise."

Somewhere in his waking slumber, Sam wants to say _yes, I know, Dean. I know_.

* * *

Death, unlike its brother, is lucid. Sam knows he's in an asylum. Knows that Dean has just exorcised the crossroad bitch back to Hell. Knows the deal is off. For just this one second, his own world falls back in the right tracks, the spindles threading the right colours, the right length. 

He's dead.

((Darkness.))

((Home.))

* * *

-The End.

* * *

_Death is a debt we all must pay._ -_Euripides_

* * *

_SIDENOTE: ( hiyacynth, honey, I'm really, really sorry. There will be lots of naked or sex or relaxing or simply happy Winchesters in the next fic, alright? Yes? Yes?) Same apology goes to all of you who might be feeling the urge to kind of. You know. Maybe kick me a bit. For the way I treated them here, poor babies.winces _

_Uhm, also, hiyacynth is one hell of a beta, meaning that she did point out all British English spelling I had. Thing is though, I find it hard to spell _color_ instead of _colour_ and _fetus_ instead of _foetus_. And _all right_, not _alright_. I just…can't, even when the style may be American, or even when I write _cuz_ instead of _because_. I just…can't. It's making my fingertips itch, cuz, hey, years of training. So if I'm making your eyeballs bleed, it's totally my fault and I apologize. But you won't hold it against me, because I'm doing the Sam puppy eyes at you. Yes? hopeful_

* * *

_DISCLAIMER: I do not own them. Lucky them._

_NOTE: I just had to, you know?_

_NOTE2: beta-ed by the shiny hiyacynth. (Thank you, lovely)._


End file.
